Weymouth departments worry about staffing levels

SouthField developer Starwood Land Ventures is proposing to have Weymouth, Abington and Rockland provide police service, fire protection and department of public works services in exchange for receiving property taxes, but Weymouth Fire Chief Keith Stark said service calls to the fire department have increased 69 percent from 1996 to 2013, while staffing levels have decreased 26 percent during this period.

SouthField developer Starwood Land Ventures is proposing to have Weymouth, Abington and Rockland provide police service, fire protection and department of public works services in exchange for receiving property taxes, but Weymouth Fire Chief Keith Stark said service calls to the fire department have increased 69 percent from 1996 to 2013, while staffing levels have decreased 26 percent during this period.

“We answer everything from a cat in the tree to a house fire, water in a basement or checking out a gas odor. We do it all,” Stark said during a March 10 special town council meeting. The department currently has 88 firefighters, according to Stark.

“When nobody is on vacation, we have 22 firefighters on a shift,” he said.

Stark said in 1990 the department was in a better position to answer emergency calls because it had a firehouse at the top of Weymouth Landing. The department’s Station 2 on Broad Street, now a dispatch center, answered calls in East Weymouth and the Navy operated a firehouse at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station, according to Stark.

“If something happened in South Weymouth, the Navy would help us out with mutual aid,” he said.

A 2012 evaluation of SouthField safety needs by a fire protection consultant hired by the South Shore Tri-Town Development Corp. recommends having a new firehouse built at the site and the purchase of a new fire engine. Stark said the department could improve its effectiveness to serve SouthField with these new additions and 22 additional firefighters would be needed to staff the substation.

Weymouth District 3 Councilor Ken DiFazio said the town should restore Station 2 to full service before it enters into any memorandum of agreement with SouthField developer Starwood to build a station at SouthField.

Weymouth Councilor-at-large Michael Molisse said new homes are being built on Meredith Way and Jacobs Lane, and these areas will require the fire department to shoulder additional responsibilities at a time when staffing levels are low.

“We also don’t know what might move into the Building 19 store or the Mass Electric building,” he said.

Weymouth Department of Public Works Director Kenan Connell said the agency is concerned about assuming the cost of maintaining the decorative streetlights at SouthField on Shea Memorial Drive.

“There are a lot of decorative lamps there,” he said “This raises a question as to who owns the street lights.”

Connell said Starwood’s proposed legislation would require the DPW to add more streets to provide services like snow plowing.

“The snow budget often runs into a deficit,” he said. “Our snow budget this year was $320,143. The snow account could easily have a $1 million deficit in Weymouth.”

Connell said the DPW had 202 employees in 1974, and there are 77 today.

Page 2 of 2 - “Our phone rings constantly,” he said. “In a big town like this we do the best we can to respond. We get a lot of redundant calls like calls about street catch basins. My obvious concern is the understaffing of the department. We are doing more with less. I’m concerned the (SouthField) taxation won’t equal what the service cost is.”

Police Chief Richard Grimes said Weymouth needs an additional 12 officers to provide effective service to SouthField and the town as a whole.

“We are at 93 officers right now,” he said.

Police receive about 25,000 service requests on average annually, according to Grimes, and police have been responding to calls at SouthField since the Navy vacated the site in 1997.

Grimes said jurisdictional law enforcement issues could arise at SouthFIeld if Starwood’s proposed legislation is approved because Rockland and Abington are located in Plymouth County whereas Weymouth is in Norfolk County.

“We have two counties and two separate court systems,” he said.

As a hypothetical example, Grimes cited a Rockland police cruiser following a car into Weymouth on the East-West Parkway and arresting the driver.

“Does it become a Weymouth arrest?” he said. “Does the arrest get referred to Plymouth County? These are the concerns we have. Jurisdiction is not clear.”

Grimes said he would not want a murder case against a suspect dismissed because of a jurisdictional legal technicality.

“It is one thing to have a traffic violation dismissed,” he said.

More information in this report is available in the March 12 edition of the Weymouth News.